L'Acheron - Nicolai: Sonatas & Suites for Viols - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Walton / Weilerstein - Viola Concertos [COMPACT DISCS] date 10/13/2017

Astor Piazzolla was in his early thirties when he travelled to France to study composition with Nadia Boulanger at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau. Her guidance profoundly shaped his music. While Piazzolla sought to refine his classical style, Boulanger urged him to embrace his roots in tango, encouraging him to elevate, not abandon, his identity. This project celebrates their meeting by weaving together their musical worlds Piazzolla's Argentine heritage - Carlos Gardel, Alberto Ginastera - and Boulanger's French influences, including Gabriel Faure and Lili Boulanger, as well as her love for early music, reflected here through a consort of viols. The dialogue between classical works and Piazzolla's Paris-era pieces evokes their extraordinary exchange unexpected, magical, and unique.

The five-part writing for strings has it's period of greatest development in the 16th and 17th centuries, only to fall into a progressive obsolescence. The most commonly used instrumental ensemble included two violins, alto and tenor viola da braccio, cello and basso continuo. Of this quintet, the instrument that undergoes a progressive dismissal is the viola tenore, which in this recording we propose in it's original late seventeenth century mounting.